I'll answer that. I did what was in my best interest. I live in DC and I wanted to keep a DC option open as long as possible just in case something happened here in town (e.g. I suddenly fell madly in love, I was named secretary of state, etc). None of these things were very likely, but I paid for the right to hang on until June 15 and that's what I did.

Now I feel your frustration with waiting, but I don't think any of us should EVER expect others to act contrary to their own best interest. Best of luck with GW!

Thanks for the good wishes, but I'm not on the GW waitlist

Sure you are entitled to wait until the last second, but that's not my point.

I'm of the opinion that if and when you make a decision not to attend (in your case, on the deposit date), you should actively notify the school at that point - not by default, as in your non-payment. Some schools allow a grace period for rectifying possible errors. I wouldn't be surprised if GW contacted you during the next few days to confirm your non-payment can be interpreted as an intention to withdraw. You spare admissions the trouble of checking out by simply calling/writing to withdraw. In not doing so, that's another few days till a potential spot opens up. Only a few days, you might say, but it's mid-June, people have waited long enough, and are desperate for decisions.

Also, open spots at high-ranked schools like GW trigger openings at lower-ranked schools. There are people out there who would appreciate it if the decent thing (note disclaimer below) were done.

As I said, I'm not on the waitlist so I don't know about GW's policies, but if GW doesn't allow said grace period and considers you withdrawn outright upon non-payment, I retract this and my previous post. If that's the case, sorry for writing upon false assumptions.

GW is e-mailing admitted students who put down a 1st deposit but have thus far failed to make a second deposit. The one I received asks for a phone/e-mail response (and $800) ASAP (and no later than June 22nd) if I still have an intention to attend. Because some of you are probably already firing up responses, yes, I sent Dean Richard a quick note thanking her for everything but expressing my intention to withdraw. So that's one seat in the PT division that will (at long last) finally be open.

I got the same email... I think a lot of people must've missed the second deposit, or they wouldn't be offering that grace period until the 22nd...

When were you admitted? When I talked to Dean Richard in person, she said that final deposits were due on the 15th. Maybe it's different for PT? Thanks for your info.

I was admitted in January or somewhere thereabouts. I filed the April deposit, but just let the June one pass without sending anything in. So the deadline was still June 15 for me, but it seems (as Cpt. Longshot said) that they are giving a grace period to at least some people. Hard to say *why* they are doing this, but at least one possible explanation is that they've seen a larger than expected number of people fail to send in the 2nd deposit.

yeah... this is pretty interesting. Dean Richard indicated to me that they might admit very few people from the waitlist b/c of the high number of initial deposits. She essentially said "don't hold your breath." But, maybe she just said that because she didn't want ME to get MY hopes up.

This whole situation changes things though. Because, if they are so "over committed," why would they even bother giving a week-long grace period? Unless, a large number of people didn't submit.

My guess is that they thought they would be over-booked or at least REAL CLOSE based on the number of first-depositors. However, perhaps they were fooled, and a lot of the first-depositors, like myself, were just holding out to see if there was money, or a full-time accept, or something else coming their way. Leading to a pwning...

My guess is that they thought they would be over-booked or at least REAL CLOSE based on the number of first-depositors. However, perhaps they were fooled, and a lot of the first-depositors, like myself, were just holding out to see if there was money, or a full-time accept, or something else coming their way. Leading to a pwning...

Just speculation. Maybe they just want to be courteous...

Well after counting the number of Accepted applicants who have withdrawn on LSN, there have probably been a lot of these people. Two weeks ago, there were ~120 people who were accepted but had withdrawn. Today, there are 156 people. The total number of acceptances has not changed though. So, that means that in the past two weeks, 36 admitted LSN people have withdrawn. If LSN is at all representative of the entire applicant pool (which it might not be), then ~12% of the admitted people have withdrawn in the past 2 weeks.

Now the only question is how overcommitted they were before? And, will this 12% reduction be enough to justify a significant quantity of waitlisters to be admitted? If the number of people waitlisted according to LSN weren't so obscenely huge, I might feel hopeful right now.

I'd also like to venture a guess that they probably did worse on the PT deposits than FT. Most PT admits were likely to get into other schools in the top-30 or so, some like myself got into very similarly ranked schools ( ) full-time.